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Opinion: Editorials

Editorial: Snapshots from the nation's press

Posted:
01/28/2018 11:35:35 PM MST

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has tried to discredit the Justice Department's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election by suggesting corruption "at the highest levels of the FBI" while offering no proof. (Win McNamee / Getty Images North America)

GOP complicity grows

A foreign power interfered in the 2016 presidential election. U.S. law enforcement is trying to get to the bottom of that story. Congress should be doing everything possible to make sure the investigation can take place. Instead, to protect the president of their party, who may or may not be complicit, Republican leaders in Congress are allowing and encouraging the baseless slander of the investigators.

It is a new low for the leadership, and one that could do lasting harm to the nation.

Cravenness in the Republican leaders' response to Donald Trump is nothing new. During the presidential campaign, few stood up to his nativism and ugly ethnic slurs. Since he became president, even fewer have stood by their previous commitments to U.S. leadership abroad and fiscal responsibility at home. As he has trampled long-established norms, such as releasing annual tax returns, we've heard not a peep from the Article I branch.

But this moment is different. Republicans have embarked on a smear campaign of the FBI that can end only in a dangerous erosion of trust in law enforcement, the subjugation of law enforcement to partisan interests or both. For Republican leaders — House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (Tex.), Vice Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference Roy Blunt (Mo.) — to remain silent is to be complicit.

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These men could, tomorrow, end this nonsense of secret societies, phony memos and missing text messages and let professionals such as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III do their jobs. Instead, they are allowing Fox News personalities, the president and loose cannons such as House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (Calif.) and Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (Wis.) to turn the United States into a country where law enforcement becomes another pawn in the partisan war.

Mr. Johnson irresponsibly recycles nonsense about corruption "at the highest levels of the FBI," offering no evidence because of course there is none. Mr. Nunes abuses his access to classified information as Intelligence Committee chairman, a title Mr. Ryan long ago should have revoked, to manufacture dark conspiracies.

If Mr. Ryan, Mr. McConnell and others continue in their acquiescence, his cynical view may come closer to reality.

—Washington Post

Another Band-Aid

The U.S. Senate found just enough compromise last week to end a three-day government shutdown for at least three more weeks. That is good news, all things considered, but also just a fraction of what will be needed to end a months-long standoff over a federal budget.

First, the encouraging parts of last week's agreement. The Senate bargain secures a six-year extension of the Children's Health Insurance Program, which is vital to nearly 9 million low-income children. It was on the verge of running out of money months after Republicans allowed it to expire. It must be said that this was a needless and particularly cruel bargaining chip. The GOP could have extended the program at any time, but for those whose lives depend on the program, its extension is welcome.

Second, Democrats have obtained a pledge by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to allow a vote on a bipartisan plan to fix the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. In another heedless bit of gamesmanship, President Donald Trump made DACA a pressure point by rescinding his predecessor's executive order, which protected undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children from being deported. Trump gave Congress until early March to reinstate the program through legislative action. Failure to do so would expose an estimated 800,000 people to eviction from this country and a prolonged prohibition on a possible return. That is an unthinkable outcome.

Those who support protections for Dreamers and reasonable immigration changes should keep the pressure on their elected officials, not turn on those who have been working toward their goal — including Republicans who have taken part in bipartisan talks.

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